The present invention relates to cabinet doors, and in particular to a safety feature integrated within a cabinet door for mitigating injuries due to head and/or body impact with a cabinet door.
Serious injuries due to an impact with a cabinet door are well reported in the media, and typically are caused by a collision with a cabinet door and a person's head. In the most severe injuries, the cabinet door does not yield, or open or close during horizontal impact. In the instance of generally direct horizontal impact with the door edge, the impact force direction is directed toward the axis of rotation of the cabinet door, and thus the cabinet door will not rotate or move in reaction away from the impact force. In the instance of generally vertical impact, such as when a person may be bent over or crouched down, and hit his head against a cabinet door when rising, the impact force is generally parallel to the axis or rotation of the cabinet door, and thus the cabinet door will also not move in reaction away from the impact force. In both of these instances, the door does not yield or move, and the impact force is directly proportional to the impact velocity. This hazardous event may be described with regards to conservation of momentum, where the product of the mass of two colliding objects and their respective velocities is conserved, and wherein m1v1=m2v2, however in the instance of the prior art, the velocity of the cabinet door may be near zero with no cabinet door reactive rotation due to the impact angle, thus causing a significant number of injuries each year. In this respect, a cabinet door with a retractable panel may provide a safety solution to such prior art cabinet door hazards, as in instances when vertically or horizontally directed impact occurs, and wherein a portion of the cabinet door will readily move or collapse away from the impact site, thus greatly reducing the possibility of potential injury